| Democracy under Siege | Global Decline Has Accelerated |
| Not as Much as Some Believe |
Democratic governance is sliding backward in the U.S. and much of the world, according to a series of recent reports.
Why it matters: The future will be shaped by the push and pull of democratic and autocratic forces within countries and beyond their borders. If supporters of democracies can't halt democracy's retreat, freedom and civil liberties could follow.
Driving the news: President Biden held an online Summit for Democracy at the end of last week against the backdrop of pessimistic assessments about the health of democratic government globally.
- In its 2021 report, the nonprofit Freedom House concluded the world is in a "long democratic recession," with democracy improving in only 28 countries while worsening in 73 — the biggest gap of the past 15 years.
- A recent report from the European think tank International IDEA found the number of "backsliding democracies" had doubled over the past decade and the number of countries moving in an authoritarian direction since 2020 outnumbered those going in a democratic direction.
- Data from the Swedish nonprofit V-Dem that was analyzed by the New York Times found the U.S. and its allies were responsible for an outsized share of global democratic backsliding over the past decade.
Between the lines: The data signals that for all the legitimate concerns about the rise of clearly autocratic countries like Russia and China, when it comes to democratic decline, the alarm is coming from inside the house.
- Biden's democracy summit included plenty of steadfast democracies, but also leaders like India's Narendra Modi and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro who preside over countries that have experienced a steep democratic decline.
- American democracy is arguably at risk as well — International IDEA included the U.S. on its "backsliding democracies" list amidst the passage of state laws that make it harder to vote and the installation of partisan loyalists in key election posts.
- The world has taken notice of democratic struggles within the U.S. — a recent Pew Research Center study found only 17% of people in surveyed countries called American democracy worth emulating, and 23% said it was never a good example.
What they're saying: In his opening remarks at last week's summit, President Biden called democratic erosion — which he blamed in part on the dissatisfaction of citizens with their democratic governments — "the defining challenge of our time."
The big picture: Democratic decline stems in part from the pandemic, as governments pursue policies to control the virus that involve restricting civil liberties like free movement and as citizens become frustrated that those policies haven't yet brought an end to COVID-19.
- But as income inequality and more general feelings of insecurity rise, life in an illiberal democracy may seem preferable to the complexities of living under a full democracy.
- That means, as Biden told Congress in an address in April, that democratic leaders have to prove "that our government still works — and we can deliver for our people."
Context: Authoritarian countries like China are taking advantage of democratic woes to tout their own systems, Axios' Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian reported recently.
What to watch: How free and fair U.S. elections in 2022 and 2024 are.
- America is still the democratic bellwether, and a repeat of the chaos of 2020 — or something worse — would be a crippling blow to democracies around the world.
The global decline of democracy
OPINION: Is American Democracy in decline or in recovery?
As angry mobs storm the US Capitol or rampage through the streets of Rotterdam, as China boasts of its success against Covid-19, ageing leaders in Africa ignore their young population’s aspirations for change and the Arab spring is succeeded by a winter of violence, disillusionment and repression, should we dismiss democracy as a quaint idea of the past?
Sebastien Brack, Head of the Elections and Democracy Programme at the Kofi Annan Foundation argues that recent events in the US have in fact shown the resilience of democracy. He outlines a roadmap out of populism and back to democracy, which Kofi Annan called “the political system most conducive to peace, sustainable development, the rule of law and the respect for human rights.”
January 6th, 2021 – Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. USA: Trump Supporters Siege Capitol Building. Editorial credit: Julian Leshay / Shutterstock.com
The events of 6 January 2021 in Washington DC marked the culmination of four years of democratic erosion in the United States, leading many to question the capacity of American democracy to recover.
This question is crucial not just for the United States, but for the whole world, as competition between political models intensifies, and confidence in democracy wanes. Kofi Annan told us that democracy “is the political system most conducive to peace, sustainable development, the rule of law and the respect for human rights, the three pillars of any healthy society”. And indeed, far from discrediting American democracy, the checks and balances that reined in Trump’s power, his electoral defeat and the way America’s body politic eventually came together to usher him out, all highlight the resilience of the American constitution and institutions. That Trump was elected in 2016 and garnered more than seventy million votes in 2021 also provides a lesson in populism and its drivers, which threaten democracies worldwide. Luckily, there are solutions to restore the health of American democracy and contain populism everywhere.
Should we dismiss democracy as a quaint idea of the past? Or, in fact, is American democracy in recovery?
Democratic resilience
Anyone familiar with the United States’ constitution should not be surprised that the American democratic system resisted Trump’s menace. Protection of the new polity from the risk of authoritarian capture was at the centre of the founding fathers’ concerns when they separated powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. They also sought to balance the centre and the periphery and protect minorities and individual rights.
Trump’s presidency illustrated the resilience of a document drafted over two centuries ago, as well as the vital importance of unwritten norms and customs. His plan was frustrated at every turn during his presidency and, in the end, the courts, a decentralized electoral system operated by honest Americans of both parties, the mainstream media, even Fox News, and finally the Republican Senate majority leader and his own Vice-President resisted his desperate efforts to overturn the elections’ results. As Biden put it, “democracy was tested, and democracy prevailed”.
Trumpism as a case study in the rise of populism
There may be a temptation to write off Trump as an aberration, whose departure will instantly resolve America’s democratic challenges. This would be a mistake, for Trump was a symptom of pre-existing conditions, some specifically American but others global, which have allowed many populists to come to power. In fact, democracy is now threatened by elected populists who subvert norms and institutions to remain in power more than by coups or revolutions.
But what drives the citizens of some of the world’s most prosperous countries to elect iconoclastic mavericks who want to bring down the very systems that led to their prosperity and stability?
Three factors stand out, all of which played a key role in the USA: a backlash against globalization; growing dissatisfaction with democratic governments’ perceived ineffectiveness; and the growing disintermediation of politics. Although globalization has raised hundreds of millions of people worldwide out of poverty and afforded consumers with a profusion of cheap goods, it has also led to wealth inequalities within countries not seen since the Gilded Age. On the one hand, some individuals and firms have been able to amass unprecedented fortunes from a global market, which they have then been able to shield from taxation thanks to global tax optimization and evasion. On the other, the working and middle classes in developed countries have seen their own incomes stagnate.
BROWNFIELD, TX – 10/09/2020 – Voting booths at polling station during American elections. Editorial credit: Moab Republic / Shutterstock.com
In parallel, populist candidates have tapped into the fears created by migration flows and population displacements over the past three decades, which shake many citizens’ sense of national identity, and are seen to threaten jobs and wages. Compounding these concerns is the perception that national governments are powerless to protect them or, worse, are complicit, due to lobbying by corporate interests in favour of big business and open borders.
As a result, public confidence in democracy has fallen worldwide over the past quarter of a century, but especially since the 2008 financial crisis. A recent study from the University of Cambridge found that in 2019 public confidence was at the lowest point on record in the United States.
Finally, populism has been facilitated by the steady decline of the institutions which traditionally moderated and channelled political passions, such as political parties, unions, churches, and the mainstream media. Increasingly dissatisfied, anxious, and atomized voters consuming ideologically polarised media provide an ideal public for populists’ siren songs.
In the United States, the rise of populism was also enabled by the emergence in the 1970s system of “primaries” as the mode of selection of presidential candidates. It removed the moderating (if undemocratic) role of party leaderships in choosing potential eligible candidates and rewarded more extremist contenders who could appeal to the partisan base.
Further, as noted in the report of the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age, the abolishment of the Federal Communication Commission’s “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987 allowed for the polarisation of American media. Broadcasters were no longer required to air contrasting and balanced views regarding controversial issues of public interest. The deregulation of the broadcast media following the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 exacerbated this polarization as new channels, like Fox News, targeted niche markets and reduced costs by cutting back on reporting in favour of ideological talk shows.
A roadmap out of populism
The Biden administration, and democracies all over the world, will have to tackle three baskets of issues if they are to stave off the risk of populism.
First, and most importantly, they must restore trust in government. The tone and style of the new President will help and a well-organized roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines, but ultimately, electoral reform will be necessary. Fortunately, a bill already exists – the “For The People Act” – that, if turned into law, would address many of the key issues involved, including limiting partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression and curbing the noxious influence of money in politics. Above all, the government must deliver: Congress urgently needs to pass some of the big legislation that has been stalled for years, such as the bills on pensions, infrastructure, and immigration.
Second, globalization needs to work for the majority. We have known since Aristotle that a large and healthy middle class is the bedrock of democracy. Yet, in many countries, the middle class has been stagnating for too long while wealth has concentrated at the top. The pandemic is rapidly increasing the gap between rich and poor: the value of stocks has soared while millions of ordinary people have lost their jobs. Addressing this will not just require not tax reform, but also curbing tax evasion, tax havens and tax optimization both by corporations and individuals.
Governments should also strengthen the social safety net for the majority, especially in the USA, where it is comparatively weak, to reduce the anxiety caused by trade, mechanization and AI that jeopardize the job security of many. And they must address another aspect of globalization that has driven middle- and working-class voters to populists: mass migration. Trump campaigned heavily on an anti-immigration agenda in 2016, as did the advocates of Brexit and the far-right AFD in Germany, which made significant electoral gains following the 2015 migration crisis. The concerns expressed by voters through the urns cannot simply be dismissed. Governments need to discuss them openly and offer credible solutions to manage migration for the benefit of all.
Third, the Trump phenomenon, ending with his unilateral censorship by Twitter and Facebook, highlighted the urgent and imperative need for regulation of social media, and re-regulation of traditional media. While attention has focused on Trump’s weaponization of Twitter, talk show radio and television networks bear a heavy responsibility for radicalizing millions of Americans. A study by the Reuters Institute shows that the USA has the most polarised media among advanced democracies, which the Kofi Annan Commission identified as a key vulnerability. It is time for a new Fairness Doctrine to break down the ideological echo chambers that have made civilized democratic debate and compromise so difficult.
Pipe Dream or Window of opportunity?
The bleak consensus seems that the US democratic system is too gridlocked to achieve the major reforms it needs. Yet there are several grounds for optimism.
First, Democrats have control of both houses of Congress and the White House, which creates a two-year window of opportunity to get major legislation through before the mid-terms.
Second, the Biden administration is competent and experienced, with the know-how to pass and implement policy rapidly.
Third, the dramatic events of the past weeks were a wake-up call that should usher in a new phase of bipartisan comity, or at least cooperation, on the Hill. Although initial signs are not encouraging, it would be in the interest of the Republican Party to eschew Trump’s brand of toxic populism and pass stalled legislation which enjoys wide popular approval, like the COVID recovery package and election reform.
Finally, the return of geopolitical competition could and should focus the minds of American lawmakers. Without a degree of bipartisanship that has been singularly lacking for years, effective government is impossible, and the United States will continue its slow democratic decline. The stakes for the USA, and democracies everywhere, have not been this high since the end of the Cold War. Much will depend not only on the Biden administration but also on the Republican Party and ultimately, on the people of the United States of America, who must put pressure on their elected leaders to do the right thing.
As Kofi Annan never tired of saying, “when leaders fail to lead, their people must make them follow.”
Sebastien Brack, Head of the Elections and Democracy
Programme at the Kofi Annan Foundation argues that recent events
in the US have in fact shown the resilience of democracy. He outlines
a roadmap out of populism and back to democracy, which Kofi Annan
called “the political system most conducive to peace, sustainable
development, the rule of law and the respect for human rights.”
https://www.kofiannanfoundation.org/articles/opinion-is-american-democracy-in-decline-or-in-recovery/
Democracy under Siege
As a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world in 2020, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes, shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny. Incumbent leaders increasingly used force to crush opponents and settle scores, sometimes in the name of public health, while beleaguered activists—lacking effective international support—faced heavy jail sentences, torture, or murder in many settings.
These withering blows marked the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The countries experiencing deterioration outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006. The long democratic recession is deepening.
The impact of the long-term democratic decline has become increasingly global in nature, broad enough to be felt by those living under the cruelest dictatorships, as well as by citizens of long-standing democracies. Nearly 75 percent of the world’s population lived in a country that faced deterioration last year. The ongoing decline has given rise to claims of democracy’s inherent inferiority. Proponents of this idea include official Chinese and Russian commentators seeking to strengthen their international influence while escaping accountability for abuses, as well as antidemocratic actors within democratic states who see an opportunity to consolidate power. They are both cheering the breakdown of democracy and exacerbating it, pitting themselves against the brave groups and individuals who have set out to reverse the damage...
...As COVID-19 spread during the year, governments across the democratic spectrum repeatedly resorted to excessive surveillance, discriminatory restrictions on freedoms like movement and assembly, and arbitrary or violent enforcement of such restrictions by police and nonstate actors. Waves of false and misleading information, generated deliberately by political leaders in some cases, flooded many countries’ communication systems, obscuring reliable data and jeopardizing lives. While most countries with stronger democratic institutions ensured that any restrictions on liberty were necessary and proportionate to the threat posed by the virus, a number of their peers pursued clumsy or ill-informed strategies, and dictators from Venezuela to Cambodia exploited the crisis to quash opposition and fortify their power.
Freedom in the World 2021: Democracy under Siege | Freedom House
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege
New Report: The Global Decline in Democracy has Accelerated.
Freedom in the World 2021 finds that the annual gap between losses and gains widened in 2020, and fewer than a fifth of the world’s people now live in fully Free countries.
The report found that the share of countries designated Not Free has reached its highest level since the deterioration of democracy began in 2006, and that countries with declines in political rights and civil liberties outnumbered those with gains by the largest margin recorded during the 15-year period. The report downgraded the freedom scores of 73 countries, representing 75 percent of the global population. Those affected include not just authoritarian states like China, Belarus, and Venezuela, but also troubled democracies like the United States and India.
KEY FINDINGS
- The 2021 edition of Freedom in the World, covering the events of 2020, marked the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Of the 195 independent countries assessed by the report, 73 experienced aggregate score declines and just 28 made gains, the widest margin of its kind during the 15-year period. There are now 54 Not Free countries, accounting for 38 percent of the world’s population, the highest share since the decline began.
- With India’s downgrade from Free to Partly Free, less than 20 percent of the global population now lives in a Free country, the lowest level since 1995.
- The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the democratic decline. Some 42 score declines across 36 countries and territories were linked to the health crisis.
- Beacons of democratic hope are being extinguished. Freedom House noted 39 countries and territories that experienced major prodemocracy protests in 2019. Of these, 23 (nearly 60 percent) suffered a net score decline in 2020.
- The United States, which remained Free, fell by three points in 2020, for a total decline of 11 points on the report’s 100-point scale over the last decade.
New Report: The global decline in democracy has accelerated
https://freedomhouse.org/article/new-report-global-decline-democracy-has-accelerated
Is Democracy on the Decline? Not as Much as Some Pundits Want you to Believe.
Recent events such as the election of Donald Trump as president and the rise of right-wing extremists in Europe have led to gloomy commentary about the state of democracy. For example, people have argued that liberal democracies are at risk of decline, that support for democracy is being eroded by the conflict between values and expertise, and that democratic backsliding has already occurred in a number of countries.
Is this pessimism warranted? Not quite. Although the average level of democracy in the world has declined to where it was 10 to 15 years ago, the decline is moderate. The world remains more democratic today than it was before the end of the Cold War. A nuanced look at the data suggests that the declines are limited to certain countries and even to certain domains within those countries.
There are still reasons to be worried, though: The quality of democracy has declined in more countries than it has improved in over the past five years.
Here’s how we did our research
These conclusions are based on new data released by the Varieties of Democracy Project. The V-Dem Project surveys about 2,800 experts and asks them to assess the nature and development of democracy in more than 177 countries from 1900 to 2016. The value of experts is that they can distinguish between real and fake democracies. For example, most countries today hold elections, but some of these elections are free and fair while others merely legitimize dictators.
Of course, expert assessments are necessarily subjective. Therefore, V-Dem normally asks five experts to evaluate each country on each of many characteristics that characterize democracy. V-Dem then aggregates the expert assessments using a statistical model. V-Dem also provides an estimate of uncertainty that reflects how much the experts disagree. When we speak of “significant” changes in democracy, we refer to changes that are visible even after taking this uncertainty into account.
In its first report, V-Dem dissected and evaluated global trends based on several indices created from these data. Here, we focus on the Liberal Democracy Index, which captures whether there are free and fair elections, leaders are constrained by the rule of law, parliamentary and judicial oversight and civil liberties are protected.
The global trends in democracy
Trends in the Liberal Democracy Index presented in the graph below:
As the graph shows, the average level of democracy grew considerably between 1970 and 2010, especially after the end of the Cold War. There has been only a slight decrease in recent years.
The overall trends conceal some important developments in specific countries. Since 2013, there have been more countries whose scores on this index were declining than countries whose scores were increasing. In 2016, 21 countries declined relative to 2011, while only 13 countries improved.
One example of a country whose score declined is Thailand, in which the military staged a coup in 2014 and suspended the constitution. Another is Poland, where the Law and Justice Party is blatantly undermining the constitution. A third is Turkey, which has seen President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan purging the ranks of opposition members and establishing a stronghold over the country.
Among the countries whose scores have increased is Tunisia, in which a popular revolution led to elections and a peaceful transfer of power. It is arguably a success story of the Arab Spring. There were also increases to above the world average in Georgia, which implemented economic reforms aimed at tackling corruption, and in Sri Lanka, where a new government reportedly is committed to transitional justice and restoring rule of law.
Worrying trends among established democracies
A concern of commentators is that democracy is declining even where it was thought to be firmly established: in Western Europe, the United States and Canada. Below is the trend in the Liberal Democracy Index in these 22 countries.
After a steep decline during World War II, democracy recovered quickly and surged above 80 points with the expansion of civil liberties and the fall of Southern European dictatorships in the 1970s. But since 2012, there has been a significant decline, from 84 to 80 points.
This decrease is present in every country except Canada, although in most countries it is not significant either because the decline is small or because experts disagree.
The United States, however, is the only advanced democracy that has experienced a significant decline in five years — a drop of nine points.
This appears to support claims that U.S. elections are the worst among other Western democraciesor that the United States is a “flawed democracy.” But we think these claims go too far. The level of liberal democracy in the United States remains high, with a score of 78 points, which puts the United States 17th in the world.
What has changed in the United States
A deeper look at the status of liberal democracy in the United States suggests that three things have suffered in recent years: the quality of elections, media reporting and government oversight. We can break down the Liberal Democracy Index into its two components: (1) the Electoral Democracy Index, which captures clean elections, freedom of association and expression, and whether there are alternative sources of information; and (2) the Liberal Component Index, which captures equality before the law, individual liberties, and legislative and judicial constraints on the executive.
From 2011 to 2016, most of the significant declines involved electoral democracy. Experts rated the United States less favorably in the freedom and fairness of its elections, the intimidation of opposition parties by government officials, media bias in coverage of political candidates, the range of perspectives in the media and media self-censorship. Anecdotal evidence that supports these declines concerns voter ID laws, media censorship and gerrymandering practices.
In terms of the liberal principles of democracy, experts rated the U.S. less favorably in freedom of religion, compliance with high court decisions, and the extent to which the executive is held accountable by oversight agencies. Note that these assessments predate the Trump administration, but the drop in freedom of religion in 2016 probably reflects his electoral campaign. The results, however, suggest that any challenges with U.S. democracy are not simply a function of Trump himself.
But all this warrants caution, not alarmism
Clearly liberal democracy is facing challenges in some countries — in particular in the United States. Therefore, U.S. political scientists are right to be on alert and continuously monitor the weak points of their democracy. In some places, it is even worse: Countries such as Turkey or Venezuela have experienced serious breakdowns.
But the V-Dem data suggests that alarmist reports about a global demise of democracy are not yet warranted. For one, the average level of democracy in the world is still close to the highest recorded level, even if a slight decline is detectable over the last few years. And there are real success stories, like in Tunisia, even if those do not make as many headlines.
Although the declines in democracy in places such as Europe and the United States deserve our attention, the V-Dem data suggest that political institutions in these countries are relatively resilient. Recent examples include the electoral victory of Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen in France and judicial challenges to the immigration ban proposed by President Trump.
Ultimately, citizens in advanced democracies should remain vigilant against democratic backsliding but we should also celebrate major gains in the quality of democracy among less democratic countries.
Anna Lührmann is a postdoctoral research fellow at the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg. From 2002 to 2009, was member of the German National Parliament.Valeriya Mechkova is a PhD candidate at the V-Dem Institute/University of Gothenburg.
Matthew Wilson is an assistant professor at West Virginia University and will be a visiting researcher at the V-Dem Institute in 2018.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/26/is-democracy-on-the-decline-not-as-much-as-some-pundits-want-you-to-believe/
